As tersa mentioned the benefits of posting in LJ (without enumerating them, admittedy), I figured possibly I should post my latest whinge to LJ.

First, a non-whinge: Halloween party was wonderful. It was great to see people. AE game prior to party was enjoyable, though the PCs were sometimes frustrated, and hit the combat portion of the entertainment only at the very end.

Sometime Saturday, I developed a bit of pain in my left foot; I noticed when leaving the party that I was definitely favoring it somewhat. This, in turn, meant that I spent most of Sunday sitting around the apartment weith my foot elevated and occasionally iced. Sunday night, it got worse. Monday, I came in to work with a cane and tried to get a doctor's appaointment; finally I got one for Tuesday morning. More pain overnight--I ended up sleeping on the couch, as it hurt less to sleep with my left foot on the back of the couch while I was lying down across the couch than to be completely horizontal on the bed.

This morning, the doctor thinks it's bursitis and gave me medicine for that. I have a followup on Friday morning--if it's not much better, it's time for a local block and a cortisone shot. I'm hoping not to have to go to those extremes, as is the doctor. He suspects it'll be somewhat better by tomorrow, and pretty well cleared by Friday. I should probably get new pads for both pairs of LARP boots, though. Luckily, we don't have many closings today, so the office manager has approved my walking around with one shoe off, for the little bit I need to walk around the office.

Also Saturday evening, my mother had extreme stomach pain and nausea, so my father ended up running her to the ER. She was diagnosed with pancreatitis, which was actually odd, since the most common causes of such are high intake of alcohol (bwah!) and gallstones (unlikely, as her gall bladder was removed a while back). Fortunately, when she was admitted, my new sister-in-law was on duty in the hospital (she's a nurse, working evening shift), so she had Mom put on her floor.

I just called Mom to see how she was doing. Her stomach is apparently feeling better, but she's having trouble breathing. Dad had told me she was on oxygen, but I didn't realize it was as bad as she sounded this afternoon. (According to her, it wasn't this bad under earlier this morning.) She was remarkably short of breath, panting the entire (incredibly brief) time we were on the phone. She mentioned that she'd had 8 doctors in to see her today, and some of them mentioned that it was somewhat serious. Then again, I'd wager that anytime someone is having problems breathing, that qualifies in and of itself for "somewhat serious." According to my father, who coincidentally just called, one of the new doctors was a pulmonary specialist, but the sister-in-law said that she got the feeling from the primary physician that was mostly a precaution. Still, they're trying to pinpoint the problem and fix it.

As my younger brother said, "we're all getting older and wearing down." Still, I'd rather be somewhat active and wearing down, even while being reminded to take precautions.

We've replaced Jonathan Crompton with a competent QB. Let's see if anyone notices.

Pirate Fest cool. Idiot snotty friends of younger brother !cool. Still better than work, though.

Forest of Doors fun. Sometimes, it's nice to remind players that the world doesn't stop at 3 am. I'm getting a bit old for 4-5 am cabin raids, but that didn't stop me from doing just that two nights in a row. OTOH, I got about 5 hours of sleep over the weekend, and 3/4 of that was last night, when I slept much later than I should've. Exhaustion is not your friend.

Of course, I also fell asleep for 3 hours after I got home, and am getting ready to crash for the night now. Beyond that, though, the field battles went well; I had some really nice RP (including, as one Plot member put it, an elementary school courtship minus pigtail-pulling); and the players and NPCs really seemed to enjoy it.

My parents were in town early on Saturday, coming in on Amtrak from DC. The train was about 15 minutes early (as I noticed when I got to the station only 5 minuites before the train was supposed to pull in), but logistics in the Atlanta station are such that the checked baggage wasn't available until after the train had left. (In part, I suspect, so that the departing passengers would be out of the station, making the process a little less crowded.) Atlanta so needs an updated station. As historic as the current one is, it was never built to hold the numbers it gets.

Come to find out later, apparently my family was converging on the Atlanta area on Saturday. Dad's brother and his family were also in town around the same time, moving his eldest daughter down. My parents apparently gave her parents my phone number, to contact me and such. With some of my family, I would cringe, but luckily, this is one of my favorite cousins from that side of the family. It's a pretty big family (Dad's the eldest of 7, and most of his siblings have 3-6 kids as well, and several of them have 2-3), so I have plenty of choices, but she and her two siblings are all high on my list. It doesn't hurt that she's more mature than most, even the older ones. She's also one of the still single ones, which probably doesn't hurt my empathy. Should be interesting.

It has obviously been a long week. I've had pasta every single night since Monday.

Now, part of the reason is that Monday, I decided that mac & cheese & hot dogs sounded like a wonderful comfort food thing. So I fixed some homemade mac & cheese, sauteed some Hebrew Nationals with a medium-sized shallot, and combined. (One of these days, I'll figure out why I always do things the hard way.) I fixed more than I realized, so I had leftovers Wednesday and a little bit on Thursday. (The rest of last night was fried green tomatoes, with a tomato I'd gotten at the farmers' market on Saturday.) Tuesday was White Tie & Tails (farfalle pasta and prosciutto strips in a bleu cheese sauce) at Casa Diaz. Tonight was fettuccine alla carbonara. Mmm, carbonara.

I should probably do a lot of walking sometime this weekend.

For the curious, here are some shots from my recent trip up to Maine. Yes, there are a lot of mountain shots in there. That's why I went. :)

It's interesting. I enjoyed walking around Portland, and I enjoyed going up the side of a mountain out in the middle of nowhere. I like doing the gamut on vacations, apparently.

I'm such a slacker, though. Instead of carefully color-correcting and re-sizing the pictures, I uploaded them to LJ's Scrapbook and let it automagically make thumbnails and smaller viewable versions. If I waited to fix them, they'd never get posted. At least I know my own limitations.

Hates the 12-hour workdays, precious. Especially when I can't even use them to get ready for tomorrow's Hell day.

So I just got a jury summons in the mail.

I'm technically on standby status, which means I have to call the day before to see if I actually need to show up. If I'm called, I'm supposed to report to the courthouse at 8 am on the day I fly back from my vacation. My plane theoretically lands in Atlanta at 5:38 pm. I don't think I'll make it.

I will call the clerk's office in the morning to try to get a postponement. I'll happily fax or e-mail them a copy of the receipt and e-ticket if necessary.

The first time I've flown out of town in 2-1/2 years, and I get a jury summons. Just another reason to look forward to vacation.

The CSA decided to unload some "premium" items on customers this week to entice said customers to upgrade their subscriptions. One of the premium items was grits, with link provided for those who may be unfamiliar with this particularly (and peculiarly) Southern dish. (Though Wikipedia doesn't make the essential--well, to some people--distinction of hominy grits, made by soaking the corn in lye first.)

I briefly considered making Watershed's oh-so-nummy shrimp grits recipe, then discovered it was a pound of shrimp per 5 cups or so of grits. No wonder it was so tasty.

Instead, I tossed things into the crockpot overnight to make a plain (plus garlic) version, and I've been dressing up the results for breakfast this morning. Breakfast came a little earlier than originally planned, because the whole apartment smelled of garlic by 6 am. (It was only two cloves! I swear!) I think my favorite so far is parmesan curry grits, followed by traditional sausage cheesy grits (sharp cheddar). Italian (black pepper, parmesan, oregano, basil, more garlic, sun-dried tomato) was worth making and improving. Plain got two bites. Plain with egg yolk (from an over-medium fried egg) was somehow transformed into something wonderful, though the sausage-cheese with the fried egg was possibly better than the parmesan curry. I see now why people eat grits topped by poached eggs.

Plenty of leftovers, which I suspect will get reheated with an egg dropped in, then chilled, cut, and dipped into cornmeal before frying tomorrow morning.

When I was growing up, I hated grits. I'm still not a huge fan of plain grits, but the porridge is a great blank slate for playing with.

For anyone in the Atlanta area who might happen to have the money and inclination to eat out today (Wednesday April 22), I offer Dining Out For Life, benefitting Open Hand, an organization that prepares and delivers fresh, nutritious meals to people in metro Atlanta with health complications.

Sadly, there are no participants around my office, so lunch is out for me. I'm looking at La Petite Maison or Nancy G's for dinner. It might put me a little late for LotRO, but it's for a good cause.

And one of these days, I'll remember/discover this before the day that it happens. At least this time, I wasn't a couple of days late.

For the three people on my FL who haven't gotten there ahead of me, along with the rest of the world (like CBS, the LA Times, other news outlets and all of YouTube, where the video is the most-watched of the month so far, despite being up for less than a week)....

I give you Susan Boyle, a dumpy, almost-48-year-old virgin from Scotland, on "Britain's Got Talent."

Ah, the power of viral video in the modern day.

She chose a damn good--and apropos--song to sing, too. I was about as choked up as Amanda Holden. That's two now for BGT.

Edit: The Herald has a great article about her, her life, and people's reactions.

Kings is apparently being moved to Saturday nights. Which, really, is just a bleed-off of the remaining episodes. I sigh.

I especially sigh because that means I'll have to catch the episodes on Hulu during LARP weekends, rather than watching them on the nice TV when aired. Ah well. I'll still get the DVDs.

The writer are doing a good job, IMHO. I really feel sorry for Silas. In a lot of ways, I really feel sorry for Jack.

( Mild Spoilers for 'First Night' )

Wow.

Okay, the writers have impressed me. One side of the end of the episode, I saw coming. The shape of the bird in the street, wings outstretched to look like a butterfly ... not so much.

Damn good retelling of David & Saul, so far. I'm just hoping that the ratings improve, and they at least get to last out the season. Ian McShane does an impressive growly king.

I almost never watch American Idol. Watching it for a few minutes now, I am reminded why.

One of the judges just called "Always on My Mind" an untouchable classic. Um. Elvis "touched" Brenda Lee's song, and went gold with it. Willie Nelson's version was "touching," not an original song. Even after that, the Pet Shop Boys did a completely different version that peaked higher in the Billboard Top 100 than Nelson's. Since then, B.B. King, Fantasia Barrino (AI!), and Michael Bublé have all recorded versions of the song.

"Untouchable classic?" I like the song, but please.

So I just finished an hour-long game of Left 4 Dead with my younger brother and his fianceé. I was going to go to bed earlier, but I saw he was on Xbox Live, so I asked him if he wanted to do an online game. He was in the middle of one, so about 40 minutes later, he called me and we started. It's a really neat little game, even moreso when played co-op, and it was fun to be social with him from afar again. The game itself is a lot like being in a zombie movie (including the fact that both the fianceé and I died as the rescuers were showing up) , and I think it's awesome that the background music is individual to each player, based on how well you're doing, how much trouble you're in, that sort of thing. Thumbs--well, forefingers since the zombie hand on the cover of the game has no thumb--up. :)

Loved the "Best Original Song" medley. The end, blending "Jai Ho" (from Slumdog Millionaire) and "Down to Earth" (from Wall-E) was incredible.

To explain the title of my post, Peter Gabriel, who wrote "Down to Earth," had complained on his blog about having to cut his song down to a 1-minute snippet, and had refused to do so. Obviously someone else did so just fine.

Now, I do wish that there were more than 3 nominees. (Incidentally, 3 is the minimum by Academy rules. It's been 4 years since there were just 3.) Heck, the Golden Globe winner wasn't even nominated. But with just 3 nominees, I was fine with the medley instead of spacing them throughout the show, especially with the other production numbers, including the salute to musicals.